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Mitch Joel: It’s time to question the meaning of social media

Andrew Keen takes a critical — and necessary — look at how the Facebooks of this world have created a ‘surveillance culture’

Has the Internet turned into a wasteland of hollow ideas and groupthink? Is it possible that in an age in which any person can have an idea and publish it in text, images, audio and video for the world to see — instantly and for free — that the true value of critical thinking is all but lost?

Photograph by: Joerg Koch, Ap Files
, Postmedia News

Has the Internet turned into a wasteland of hollow ideas and groupthink?

Is it possible that in an age in which any person can have an idea and publish it in text, images, audio and video for the world to see — instantly and for free — that the true value of critical thinking is all but lost?

Has all of the user-generated content that we see in channels like YouTube degenerated us to the point where the only thing everyone talks about around the water cooler is some moronic video of a poodle on a skateboard?

Andrew Keen made this argument in his book The Cult Of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture (Bantam Dell Publishing Group, 2007). The book, which has been published in 17 different languages, took a very opposing view of the Internet and the power of social media. In some instances, this made Keen massively popular (especially when mass media channels wanted an opposing view), but in other circles, he was named the Antichrist of Silicon Valley. Nice title, if you can get it.

So who is Andrew Keen? The British-American built the popular Audiocafe.com in 1995 (during the dot-com boom), but has since moved on to become a media pundit. He is the host of Keen On, a video interview program on TechCrunch, a columnist for CNN, and a regular speaker and commentator on Internet culture and digital technologies. He recently released his second book, Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us (St. Martin’s Press).

Don Tapscott is a world-leading authority on innovation, media, and the economic and social impact of technology. He’s been at this game for over 30 years, having published more than 10 widely read and best-selling books on the topic (including Wikinomics, The Digital Economy, Growing Up Digital and his latest, Macrowikinomics). Tapscott is the chairman of Moxie Insight, a member of the World Economic Forum, adjunct professor of management for the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Martin Prosperity Institute fellow. Here’s how he described Keen’s book, Digital Vertigo: “More disorienting drivel from the enfant terrible of the digital age. Do not buy this book as it will distract you from the truth (my views).”

Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder and current director of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self, and author of the bestselling business book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (Basic Books, 2011), has a different take on Keen’s book: “A bracing read. From Hitchcock to Mark Zuckerberg and the politics of privacy, a savvy observer of contemporary digital culture reframes current debates in a way that clarifies and enlightens.”

“My new book is less about how we think of ourselves as next-generation broadcasters and much more about how we seem to be revealing more and more of ourselves online and being continually watched,” Keen says from his home in San Francisco. “Digital Vertigo is about both narcissism and voyeurism, and less about the network becoming a next-generation media platform for the distribution of information. While I don’t think mass media was a paradise, I am nostalgic for it. As it disappears more and more, we’re going to remember not its weaknesses — which there were many — but its strengths: It’s ability to speak to larger groups of people than the niche media of the Internet. It’s not a technological issue, it’s a cultural one.”

How self-involved is your digital experience? If Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are not about narcissism, what is? Before online social networks and social media, the majority of us would start off our online journey at a destination or a portal (think Yahoo!, AOL, etc.). Now, the portal is a personal portal. Most people’s home page is their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn profile.

We hop to Google and LinkedIn to creep on what others are saying about us. We have a strong expectation that advertisers — who are now tracking our each and every digital move — will direct advertising that is completely relevant and complementary to our online consumption and creation. In biblical speak, the majority of us are building what can only be described as digital shrines to ourselves and all of our personal glory. The photos that we post are almost as unrealistic as our expectation that we’ll get some semblance of happiness from all of these digital ego boosts that we live in.

“I’m fascinated with this idea of serendipity,” Keen says of how we are destroying chance, mystery and general interest in our society. “I’m trying to deal with serendipity in a film noir, Hitchcockian way in Digital Vertigo. I’m arguing that what appears to be serendipitous is quite the reverse: Nothing is really serendipitous on the Web. Everything is arranged. Everything is planned.

“So, when we appear to come across something by chance, it is because networks and advertisers are organizing it that way. Hitchcock’s Vertigo is the central metaphor in my book because in that film, Jimmy Stewart was set up to fall in love with somebody who didn’t really exist.

“I think the same kind of phenomenon happens all of the time online. Maybe it’s a deeper, more philosophical, conversation that perhaps nothing is serendipitous on the Web. ... It’s not my message that has changed over the years, it’s that the rest of the world — and more sensible people — are starting to better understand this surveillance culture that includes the Facebooks, Googles and Foursquares of the world.”

Yes, Keen’s work is contrarian, provocative and forward-thinking. As more and more of us expose ourselves (and those around us) online — and in real time — has anyone stopped to ask, “At what cost?” How is this good for us, as individuals, and for our culture? This is what Keen is trying to decipher in Digital Vertigo.

So regardless of whether you’re wondering if social media are good for business and equally powerful for individuals, it’s always important to have thinkers such as Andrew Keen throw a wet blanket on the notion that Facebook is making us better — whether or not Wall Street has already done that for us.

Has the Internet turned into a wasteland of hollow ideas and groupthink? Is it possible that in an age in which any person can have an idea and publish it in text, images, audio and video for the world to see — instantly and for free — that the true value of critical thinking is all but lost?